Thursday, August 10, 2017

Sport For Jove and the Seymour Centre present, ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST, by Dale Wasserman, adapted from the novel by Ken Kesey, in the Reginald Theatre, Seymour Centre, Chippendale. August 3 - 19, 2017.

ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST is best known as the Academy Award laden Milos Forman film, made in 1975, starring Jack Nicholson as Randle P. McMurphy and Louise Fletcher as Nurse Ratched. The essential core of the work is the battle between the Dionysian spirit with the formally controlled world that permits it to function for the supposed 'greater good'. Knowing that It's a Mad, Mad, Mad World (Stanley Kramer's 1964 film) the metaphor of having this 'battle' take place in an asylum seems reasonable - after all, this literary view of the world goes as far back as Thomas Middleton's Jacobean comedy/drama A MAD, MAD WORLD performed in 1605, and even before, perhaps, to Euripides and his THE BACCHAE, written in C.405BC.

ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST began as a novel written in 1962 by counter culture 'warrior' Ken Kesey, who saw himself as a conduit of revolution against the confines of the values of Eisenhower America, beginning with the 50's beat generation-beatniks to the 60's hippie sex, drugs and rock 'n roll culture. The novel was then, contextually, a necessary cultural hit and was adapted for the theatre in 1963 by Dale Wasserman and, too, became a success for Broadway audiences. The message of the play struck the bells of alarum for the awakened to rise up and set the spirit free - they tried. That they have failed and passed the 'torch' to the next generation even to our children's generation and our social media infested correctness, is why this play is still a relevant archaeological wonder. That the original stage McMurphy was Kirk Douglas and that it followed his rebel Spartacus attempting to counter the Roman cultural straight-jacket, in the Kubrick film, tells us that this figure of counter culture was, is, and always will be a re-generating icon.

Kim Hardwick, the Director, has given the play a production of some respectful gravitas and, mostly, circumvents the now dated conventions of the writing. There is always a delicate path that artists must take when creating 'mad' people in a 'madhouse' and this company of actors have found a level of restraint that keeps the focus of the thesis of the writing free and clear. It is not a comic 'grotesque' of zoological - Charenton (MARAT/SADE) - watching.

Anthony Gooley, as McMurphy, gives a performance of surety of character and of a knowledgeable storytelling arc development and is matched by the subtle drawing of Nurse Ratched by Di Smith, who creates a woman of deep belief in what she is doing without stepping into the emasculating terror that we recall from the Forman film - these two performances gives some balance to the two positions of the protagonists with graduating intensity and focus.

There is good support work from Travis Jeffery (Billy Bibbit), Laurence Coy (Scanlon) and Wendy Strehlow (Cheswick). Staged with care the 'choreography' of the work is masterfully managed by Ms Hardwick, but it is in the 'orchestration' of the voices, the music of the writing - the pitch, volume and especially energy of the vocal work - where the production more often than it should drifts into theatrical doldrums. A large ensemble of 15 actors still have not all found the right performance orchestration entries to keep the work in developing momentum to quicken the pulse of the audience to a delirious immersion. This is where the innate sensibility of Mr Gooley comes, especially, to the fore, but he cannot drag the whole shebang forward by himself, nor can the other few tuned instruments cover with him - all the 15 must be attentive and alert to the music of the Wasserman storytelling. This may right itself as the season proceeds.

True to her usual aesthetic sensibilities, Ms Hardwick has created with Set Designer, Isabel Hudson, a 'beautiful' contemporary solution for the play. A raised, slightly raked stage of large blocks of white toned floor, surrounded by opaque plastic sheets, that fall to reveal a mirrored back wall at the play's end is spectacularly lit by Martin Kinnane in a Lighting Design of much complexity and theatrical intelligence. Too, Steve Francis with his Sound Design and Composition creates tension and a magical 'envelope' to serve the drama of the spiritual elements of the story.

This production of ONCE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST is a curate's egg - an event that is good and bad in parts, and may leave you with mixed feelings of satisfaction. I was surprised that I had found the play still interesting and recognised the age old but true statement of the play, importantly appealing (I never liked the film much), or was it the performance of Mr Gooley that kept me in the work, it is certainly, for me, the best work he has given since his famous turn in THE LIBERTINE of a few years ago - though he is never less than good in whatever he tackles.

Sunday, August 6, 2017

KINDERTRANSPORT, is an English play written in 1993, by Diane Samuels.

Diane Samuels has written:

In early November 1938 an intensive series of 'pogrom' attacks on Jewish property and arrests of people were launched in Nazi Germany. This became known as 'Kristallnacht', The Night of Broken Glass, and has subsequently been called "pogromnacht' or Novemberpogrome'. In the wake of this calculated violence the British government was lobbied by Jewish humanitarian and Quaker organisations to provide refuge. Ten thousand permits were made available for children of sixteen and under to enter and remain in the United Kingdom. So began, at the end of 1938, a series of train relief trips, the Kindertransport, from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia. These continued for almost a year until the Second World War began in early September, 1939.

This play tells the story of a young Jewish German child, Eva (Sarah Greenwood), who is evacuated by her mother (Emma Palmer) to the city of Manchester and the home of Lil (Annie Byron), who cares, and after the end of the war, guides her into adulthood, as her parents are presumed dead. Much later after Eva has adopted an Englishness and new name Evelyn (Camilla Ah Kim) and nurtured a family of her own, her adult daughter, Faith (Harriet Gordon-Anderson), comes across memorabilia in an attic trunk that reveals a history of her mother that she has never known. In her entitled demand to have knowledge Faith aggressively forces Evelyn to reconnect to her childhood trauma, and the haunting of a childhood nightmare figure, the Ratcatcher (a figure that we recognise, know, as the Pied Piper of Hamelin), who captures children and removes them from their families, comes again to vivid and terrifying life.

The play is not based on a single story of history, but is a speculative fiction focused on investigating the psychological trauma that refugees may experience and the means that some may choose to find a way to survive, to be able to recover and thrive. The play presents the time-jumps of the storytelling in a non-linear way and is gentle, though surprising and enthralling in the emotional incidents it chooses to reveal on stage. It reveals the generational need to keep or expose secrets, and the clash of the rights of each generation to keep or expose those secrets. It connected me back to the intense and immersive experience of the bAKEHOUSE production earlier in the year of THE LADEN TABLE and its contemporary Jewish and Muslim family secrets and the contemporary, often clashing generational value placed on them.

The five women in this company: Camilla Ah Kin, Annie Byron, Harriet Gordon-Anderson, Sarah Greenwood and Emma Palmer give satisfying and accomplished performances. Ms Ah Kin is the best I have seen her and is intensely moving in her character's struggle with the cleft stick of choice that confronts Evelyn. Whilst Ms Greenwood delicately and with gathering strength transforms the story of Eva from child to adult. Christopher Tomkinson plays all the 'uniformed' men of the play with aplomb.

The Set Design by Imogen Ross of walls of boxes and versatile period furniture are enhanced by the Lighting of Matt Cox and all aurally encased in the sure hands of Jed Silver, as the Sound Designer and Composition.

KINDERTRANSPORT is a warm and moving telling of the turmoil of the consequences of war on ordinary people - and their consequential lifetime of trauma/stress. It has a relevance for our own times and the great tragedy of the world's present refugees. The play and production by Sandra Eldridge tells a story that puts a personal face to the collective that we generally call, know as, 'refugees'. Gently recommended.

Outhouse Theatre Company and Mad March Theatre Company in association with bAKEHOUSE Theatre Company present, DRY LAND, by Ruby Rae Spiegel, at the Kings Cross Theatre (KXT), in the Kings Cross Hotel. July 28 - August 19.

DRY LAND is an American play by a young writer, Ruby Rae Spiegel, played in a 90 minute no interval one act mode. It is a particularly interesting entry, for an audience, into a story concerning the issues of young women (American high school age), never really dealt with on stage (perhaps, Wedekind's SPRING AWAKENING is an exception, Premiered in 1906). For, this play is dealing with unwanted teenage pregnancy and the attempts to keep it hidden and the application of self-abortion through physical and chemical action. Talking to women friends afterwards, they spoke of knowing the circumstances of the play in their growing up. This was, for me, an eye-opener, new territory.

Two Florida students in swim training, Amy (Patricia Pemberton) and Ester (Sarah Rae, Anne Meacham) collude to hide and execute an abortion. We are in the locker room of the pool, a white tiled space with benches (Set Design by Isabel Hudson) as we are taken on a confronting and youthful ignorantly merciless journey of violence - oddly, there are no adults, parents, teachers or pool authorities, in this playing time to advise or assist with other alternatives. And it is not only the physical violence of the aborting of the foetus we are engaged with but also the psychology of the raw politics in the interactions of the developing psyches of these young evolving people, from adolescence to adulthood, where the discovering issues of one's own sexuality is just as frightening.

Ms Spiegel has an acute ear for the content and cruel psychological strategies of youth as they try to make sense of their 'powers' and how to assert their Darwinian need to survive in the tribe. It is both comic and stark in its ruthlessness. The fact that it is told through the lives of two young women puts DRY LAND into the confrontational and informative world of the work of Australian playwright Patricia Cornelius with her recently presented plays SLUT (2008) and SHIT (2015). DRY LAND, Directed by Claudia Barrie, in a hyper-realistic manner, in real time, offers the witnessing endurance of the blood-soaked and horrendously noisy ultimate act of delivering the dead foetus on newspaper on white tiles. Not since the stoning of a baby in a pram in Edward Bond's notorious but amazing play SAVED (1965), or, the plumbing with twisting knitting needles of the ear drums of a character in his LEAR (1971), will you have experienced such graphic stage images. (On opening night, a young man fainted at the near height of the action).

The two actors, Ms Pemberton and Meacham, are committed fearlessly in the present action of the play and are courageous in their investment. I, however, was not drawn in, not sensing or being presented with the complete life-force of their characters as fully realised people to be able to believe in them. The life force of any character on stage is shown with a realised sense of the time dimensions of the character, their past, their present and their future, all together, each moment, second to second, in the story. In life we exist in the present because of the 'actions' of our past and in 'conscious or unconscious' pursuit of our future. We are sitting, present, in that theatre because of our past, in conscious or unconscious pursuit of our future, which gives us our vulnerable humanity. Neither of these actors gave me thought processes that revealed their back story/history, their past, to help me justify what was happening in the present in front of me. I saw their passionate present choices/decisions but had no understanding how Amy or Ester got to this horrendous place. They just 'were' - two dimensional representations of youth in a particular time and space.

The closeness of this Traverse Space in the KXT is particularly demanding on actors to bring their own life existences to the storytelling, and not just to give good demonstrations of emotional states. Often, both these actors went to expert outpouring of emotional states at the expense of the technical need to harness, to balance the subjective emotional summonings with the objective need to story tell, to bring clarity to the text, the story telling tools of the writer, which often resulted in shouting which blurred the poetry, the artistry of the writing, and moved it into a kind of Grand Guignol, melodrama sensationalism.

The deliberate slow pacing of the many scene changes in the play accompanied by an ominous soundscape composition (Benjamin Pierpoint) and the instance of the laboured and dramatically extended floor cleaning of the blood (was there too much blood? - more suitable, with the noise, as well, to a full term labour than a three month expulsion?) by the nonchalant Janitor (Julian Ramundi) of the pool locker room, seemed to be an over statement of a sadistic tension that was a Director's prerogative. Atmospherically affective, perhaps, but dramatically implausible. Ms Barrie has an inclination to this over-heated' kind of statement, witness her choices in a work such as Philip Ridley's SHIVERED (2012). It was the restraint to the horror of the emotional and graphic world of her production, with her actors, that made BENGAL TIGER AT THE BAGHDAD ZOO, earlier in the year, a significant experience of a first-rate kind: fully endowed emotional states simmering below the surface as readable sub-text with deliberate restraint, for the audience to be able to partake in an endowed cathartic experience with clear storytelling support, because the playscript was communicated front and centre.

So my lack of belief in the playing of the two principal characters, Amy and Ester, left me out of the emotional loop of the writer's objective and gave me room to contemplate some of the dramaturgical holes in this first play by a young writer. I was more connected to the performances of Michelle Nye (Reba) and Charles Upton (Victor) in minor roles in the context of the story.

DAY LAND, is presented in this production as a 'sensation' (horror/gore) challenge and will be remembered by most who are courageous enough to attend as such, rather than as a brave exposure of what, it seems, is a regular part of the 'plotting' in most young women's worlds, rarely, publicly, talked about, let alone exposed in live theatre performance.

RICE is a new Australian play, by Asian-Australian writer, Michele Lee. It received the Queensland Premier's Drama Award 2016-2017, and this production was first presented by Queensland Theatre in the Billie Brown Studio, in June, Directed by Lee Lewis.

Michele Lee has been working around the edges of the mainstream theatres for many years, and this is the first major mounting of one of her works. Nisha (Kristy Best), the Australian-born grand-daughter of a West Bengali migrant family, is a high-flying executive at Golden Fields, Australia's largest producer of rice. As an Executive-Officer she has been preparing a deal with the Indian Government - by 'hook or by crook', it seems - which will place her company at the centre of India's rice distribution. She is also dealing with the sad disintegration of her Didima, grandmother. Working late every night, she encounters Yvette (Hsiao-Ling Tang), a single Asian mother, who, while working under contract to clean offices, is also an enthusiastic entrepreneur with a trail of failed, dodgy businesses behind her. Yvette is, also, having to deal with a troubled activist daughter, Sheree. They both discover that they have a lot in common.

Says Ms Lee in her Playwright's Notes in the program:

Initially I said RICE was about a plethora of 'big' contemporary issues. As if I was some Mike Moore of theatre. Mass agriculture. Super economies. Mercenary corporations. Women in business. RICE is about these things. But it's probably, primarily, about two women searching out for new friendships and new intimacies, new versions of family, however fleeting.

Certainly, then, in the present political environment of our Performing Arts industry this play ticks many of the boxes that will take it to serious consideration for actual production from Main Stream companies. A writer of the female sex (tick) from a minority Australian culture (tick), with two roles for women (tick) that will demand a cultural diversity in casting (tick), dealing with contemporary issues (tick). Plus, the offer by the writer that the two actors, who play Nisha and Yvette will, also, play an extra four characters each, of various sex and ages, thus ensuring that the Producing company, or companies, need only employ two actors - a budgetary consideration of often irresistible attraction (tick) to get one's work produced by the Professional Company in Australia. (A strategic gesture by Ms Lee?) In this case the Producing companies, the Arts Funded Queensland Company and the Griffin Company (of NSW origin) need only pay one actor each for this three month rehearsal/performance season (tick,tick).

Now this suggestion by the writer to have the two actors to play five roles each, (although in the program it is indicated that the actors are to only 'also speak' the lines for the characters - "Speak", that's all? Is that an ignorance of the writer of the actor's field of creative effort?) across multiple sex and age dimensions, is no hindrance to successfully deliver the play to an audience. It, simply, demands that the Director, in this case Lee Lewis, find two very versatile (necessarily, experienced) actors - who have not only highly developed technical acting skills to switch swiftly from one character to another, but, have an instinctive ease and appetite to be able to do so. If achieved, it will be part of the magic of the production, and give the actors the thrill of a fierce artistic challenge. The opportunity that Ms Lee is offering could be a gift for the right actor - there are, I believe, not many actors that could meet, comfortably, the demands. The alternatives then, are 1. that the time to work with the Director to sort out with the two actors the necessary cues of change demarcations for the different characters for ultimate communication and 'thrill' will be time that will be both abundant (budget cost?) and intense (emotional cost?), or, 2. you employ more actors - even, in this case, you might get away with just two others - if you were really lucky. A cast of four, at least, two for the principal roles: Nisha and Yvette, and two for the other four roles - did the two Companies ever consider that choice? Did Budget concerns close down that option?

In the case of the present production neither of the actors are easefully skillful in demarcating either , physically or vocally - except with half-hearted dialectical adaptations (Dialect coaches, Jennifer White and Gabrielle Rogers) - the cues for the audience to 'read' with alacrity which character is speaking so as to keep attention on the content of the story. Ms Best, as Nisha, is best in her upfront pleasant presentational mode, wide eyed and smiling, which is utilised for all her characters. Her energy investment on the night I saw the show needed to be tempered to allow the audience in, to be able to identify and empathise - sometimes it was almost assaulting in its overpowering offers - and the gear changes from character to character were not very easily communicated. While Ms Tang, as Yvette, was more grounded in her energy on the night and therefore more successful in her responsibilities of demarcated difference.

The construction and content of Ms Lee's play is particularly interesting for its cultural insights, if not unique either thematically or observationally, and is hindered, mostly lost, in the pell mell and 'flat', shallow, differential characterisations drawn by the actors under Ms Lewis' Direction. The Set and Costume Design, by Renee Mulder, is serviceable in its impeccable neatness, adjusted from the Queensland production in a differently configured acting space with Lighting, similarly useful, from Jason Glenwright.

There are, then, many political tick box reasons to see RICE, but if you go, for clarity of content, don't go tired. To get the most out of this prize winning text in this production, you will have to be extremely alert. Or, wait to see a production that can afford more actors to overcome what is a versatility problem with this company.

In the year 2017, in what I feel is a year of a cultural murmur of social progress, with the arrival of WONDER WOMAN, at out local cinemas, where many of my 'girlfriends' have been seen, or have reported, that they wept, because of some deep stirring in their human/female psyche, Evelyn Doreen Warburton O.B.E. (Doreen Gabriel), on the 17th July, passed away. I believe Doreen Warburton was a real life Wonder Woman of her time. In my living through theatre history I have benefited from contact with Five Wonder Women, without whom, I have often wondered how my life would have been different. I wonder, really, how different Sydney Theatre would have been without their determined presence.

There are, in my experience, five Wonder Women of the Theatre of Sydney:

1. Doris Fitton and her extraordinary forging of a Performing Arts industry based in the Independent Theatre, in North Sydney, in the time of the lively cultural tentacles of the British Empire, the Commonwealth that followed and, Menzies' Liberal Party Kingdom - remember her groundbreaking Professional Repertory Season in the 1960's - it included UNCLE VANYA, MOURNING BECOMES ELECTRA - I was a school kid and remember and was inspired. I, also, briefly, attended an acting class, upstairs at the Independent, run, I think, by Keith Bain - my first one.

2. Elizabeth Butcher, who beginning as the Bursar at the National Institute Of Dramatic Art, in 1969, has had an extraordinary influence on the shape of the Sydney (Australian, International) scene, not only with her enterprising nurturing of her students in all the practises of the theatre crafts, but in her influence to found the Sydney Theatre Company (with John Clark) in its transition from the Old Tote Theatre Company, to find the Wharf 4 venue. Besides her presence in senior administrative positions at The Australian Council for the Arts, the Sydney Opera House, Council of the University of NSW, the Seymour Centre, the NSW Advisory Arts Board, and even to today, as an active member on the NAISDA Board, working with the Indigenous dance community.

3. Doreen Warburton, an actor and one of the co-founders, and leader of the Q Theatre, first, in a 14 year commitment to a lunch time theatre that was made 'glorious' in the AMP Auditorium, at Circular Quay, in the 60's and early 70's. Then, with her leadership and founding of the Q Theatre, in Penrith in 1977, which she took boldly, and against great advice to what Sydney proper called the cultural desert of the outer Western suburbs (still, in 2017, a prejudice in some minds of the ARTS Institutions!!)

4. Wendy Blacklock, actor and entrepreneur in the founding of the touring theatre organisation, Performing Lines.

5. Sandra Bates, and her cossetting of the artistic and financial fortunes at the Ensemble Theatre, after the 'reign' of Hayes Gordon, without government support - how did she do it?

All of these women with a missionary zeal, in a tight patriarchal society, were the visionaries and founders of much industry for actors and other artists, in the recent history and even present theatrical scene, in Sydney. They ought to be celebrated and have their contribution indelibly memorialised.

My first memory of Doreen, I think I was still at school, so, maybe, when I was 16, was in an Australian play called THE CELL, in which she played a nun (those of us who remember Doreen can only smile at Doreen in a nun's habit!), at the Independent Theatre, in North Sydney, run by, one of the other Wonder Women of the Sydney Theatre, Doris Fitton. (Co-incidentally, it was at Ms Fitton's theatre that I made my professional debut, in 1971, in a David Mercer play, AFTER HAGGERTY, Directed by Aarne Neeme).

Doreen was born in a 'rough' suburb of London in 1930, was blitzed out of London during World War II and evacuated to the country, separately, from her siblings. Doreen had a Quaker education that stimulated her endless curiosity about the world and led her to the wonder of the theatre. One of Doreen's seminal experiences was her work with Joan Littlewood and her theatre company - where she met the musician Ewan MacColl. All of this was a profound shaper of Doreen's theatre philosophy - a sense of responsibility to community and a belief that the theatre opens the doors and windows to the world for all, and that it needed to be both 'accessible' and 'affordable', for all. Doreen followed her family to Sydney, Australia, and as a young actress began to build a career. Radio, theatre - in her career arc it included such stuff as A TASTE OF HONEY, YOU NEVER CAN TELL, GETTING MARRIED, THE MATCHMAKER, IRENE, A HARD GOD, THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST. She was a member of the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust Company that used to tour around Australia, presenting Shakespeare. Television and film followed (infamously, remembered for her scene-stealing presence in THEY'RE A WEIRD MOB - 1966). She, also, met Ben Gabriel, a Sydney actor of great reputation. They were temperamental opposites that was the bond of their great love in a marriage that lasted until the passing of Ben in 2012.

I came into the 'gravitational' pull of Doreen's vision in 1975, when after deciding that acting was too hard, had decided to give it up, and whilst working as a guide at the Opera House, began helping out front-of-house at the Lunchtime 'Q' Theatre. I was invited onto the committee of the theatre and was given my first professional production as Director, of a one act play by Michael Cove. I'm not sure why I was given the job other than, perhaps, as Doreen was to play the leading role, no-one else was prepared (or available!) to take it on - I, an innocent, led to 'danger'. Whatever transpired, it all, for me, went well. This was when Doreen presented to her committee, the idea of setting up a theatre in the outer suburbs of Sydney.

Doreen had come up with a plan.

In 1975 and 1976, 'acolytes': Richard Brooks, Michael Cove, Tony Ingersent, and myself, were sent out to the 'wilds' - what some called the 'cultural deserts' - of Sydney, as far west as the Blue Mountains, as far South as Wollongong, as far North as Newcastle, to provide Ten Week Free Acting Classes in different communities whose Councils had been persuaded by Doreen to provide a space/hall for us to do it in. I remember sometimes arriving at 7pm somewhere, say Blacktown, and meeting a group of people up to the number of 80, aged anywhere between 8 and 80 and beginning an introduction to acting - I learnt, quickly, in the first classes, to give vigorous physical exercises, that sifted some of the participants out of their inspiration to be want to be actors. From these classes we would choose the most interesting (promising) to attend an "Advanced" Acting Workshop, on Saturdays, which, organised by Doreen, I took charge of, based in the Parramatta Psychiatric Hospital, just across the road/park from the present Riverside Theatre site, today. We were building a loyal and enthusiastic cohort of citizens from many diverse backgrounds from all over the Sydney Metropolitan area.

In the meantime Doreen, whilst playing nationally in the J.C Williamson's musical IRENE, was becoming familiar with the different Councils and lobbying the Arts Funding organisations to support her vision. Doreen was a life-force of irresistible scale. Her personality was charming, masking her determination, and who was not afraid to use her flirtatious nature and robust, often bawdy, sense of humour to help persuade authority and Government, to her vision. Into, what was the highly charged testosterone 1970's political world, Doreen strode with all the glamour and strategy of an Amazonian warrior and seductress, usually dressed in a figure covering, multi-patterned and coloured mumu dress, large hoop earrings and her blonde hair in a bun on the top of her head with a triangle of cloth tied in it. Her great virtues were her open-hearted generosity and straight-forward common sense logic. She was a tough and demanding leader but I never ever heard her speak disrespectfully or with cruelty to any individual in her professional world. She none the less was a formidable force of determination, which is not to say she was not vulnerable - watching her prepare in a Tech week and on an Opening night as a Director of work, and especially as an actor, and meeting her before any of her major meetings with the authorities that could provide or prevent her vision to come to life was to see a nervous girlish child, laughing, and shallowly puffing on a cigarette - she never seemed to ever inhale - to mask her fear of failure or rejection. She never was ever rejected, in my experience. She always was inflamed, exhilarated, by the 'battles' she found herself in. Blazing bravado!

After two years of seeding community support all over Sydney, Doreen proposed to certain Councils the idea of having a Professional Theatre Company within their midst. The successful council was Penrith who gave the 'Q' Theatre the local Railway Institute Hall, at a small rent, just across from the railway station, and although they couldn't give money, gave support in kind with plumbing, electrical work and re-assembling of the spaces, for the theatre. We were also in there, beside the tradesmen with sledge hammers, and tools of carpentry, often in the raw heat of 40 degree Emu Plains heat. The local blood-house pub, The Red Cow, was part of our daily recovery from Doreen's supervisory urgings - sometimes the community of the local bikies, part of the permanent scenery of The Red Cow, became part of our audience - friends were made through all startas of the local community.

In the meantime Doreen (actor/director/teacher/leader/politician/boss) had selected an organising force about her: Richard Brooks (director/actor/teacher/Red Cow denizen), Tony Ingersent (actor/director, administrator) Arthur Dicks (designer/director) Max Iffland (academic/dramaturge) and myself. We auditioned a group of professional actors. We could afford 5 and chose Ron Hackett. Vola Van Dere, Alan Brel, Linden Wilkinson and Ron Rodger to augment the artistic core (other actors became members of the company over its history e.g. Elaine Hudson, Alexander Hay, Bill Conn, Gae Anderson, Ben Gabriel, Judy Davis). Arthur Dicks had designed a portable, 'Mechano'-set, three sided theatre space that sat in the space of the Railway Institute, and in the first season we pulled down and transported to our other community centres (it nearly 'killed' us and we only did that for a year): Parramatta and Bankstown (a few years later to Orange). Two weeks in Penrith, a week in Parramatta, a week in Bankstown, a week in Orange. We all took on all tasks and if we were not performing we were front-of-house, stage management, constructors and set painter, etc. We were all paid the same amount of money - just above equity minimum. An instance of our jobs: was performing Wednesday to Sunday, rehearsing the next production Tuesday to Friday, and teaching in the 'Q' Acting Workshop, Saturday from 9am- 3pm (Shows at 4.30pm and 8pm). It was hard work but we all loved it and Doreen was our patient and diligent leader, task master.

We opened, the 'Q' Theatre, in Penrith, in March, 1977 - forty years ago - with a musical LOCK UP YOUR DAUGHTERS. With Equity permission, to celebrate, the acting company, was expanded by members of the Q Theatre Workshop from our community. The audiences were thrilled to have their own professional theatre and be able to see friends on stage, as well - a coup de theatre in Doreen's strategy. A loyal and enthusiastic audience was captured. To subsidise the company's work - to support up to two productions - the 'Q' also played a Music Hall/Melodrama/Sing-along Theatre Restaurant season in Bankstown Town Hall for the Christmas season from October to late December, every year. This was a vital part of Doreen's plans and she cared for it with extra vigilance.

Doreen was a great supporter of the new Australian writers of the time and included work by David Williamson, Peter Kenna, Bob Herbert in her seasons, and new work from fledgling writers including Martin Sharman and Noel Hodda, and commissioning musical theatre e.g. Phillip Scott's SAFETY IN NUMBERS, and several rock musical's including, ST MARY'S KID, from young people of the local communities, which she took to Sydney proper, to condescending appraisal. The 'Q' Theatre won the Sydney Critics Award in 1979.

Doreen provided creative and work opportunities for an astounding number of artists, entertained and 'educated' a local audience and laid the foundation for the presence of the Joan Sutherland Arts Centre in Penrith, which houses the latest iteration of the 'Q' theatre still today.

Whilst acknowledging the Riverina Trucking Company (1976) and the Hunter Valley Theatre Company (1976), Doreen Warburton's philosophy and hard practical actions for the 'Q' Theatre marks her out, for me, as a Woman of Wonder. Along with the other women I have mentioned above, who have made an integral contribution to my theatre experiences, Doreen Warburton, along with Elizabeth Butcher, were/are my theatrical mothers. I have much to be grateful for her life force energy that propelled and sustained my own career. Many of us do.

In Sydney, with the recent founding of the Women in Theatre and Screen (WITS), it is important to point to the women who have/are leaders of Theatre, who, without, I wonder where our industry would be today. What careers have been realised from their hard work and inspiration? Let us champion their history. Doreen's nephew, Darren Warburton at the Celebration of Doreen's Life, mentioned there was a rich collection of Doreen's papers stored in his garage. Is there someone able to tackle her lifework into a book?

Thursday, August 3, 2017

THE ROVER, is a play by Aphra Behn, written in 1677. It is part of the playwriting literature emanating from the Restoration of Charles II to the throne and power, after the Puritanical leadership of Oliver Cromwell as the Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland. The play, in verse, is a swash-buckling exuberance of Carnival time in the city of Naples, invaded by some English sea-dog exiles, roving the Mediterranean, some 20 years prior to the Restoration. It is based on Thomas Killigrew's THOMASO (1664) and its great strength lies not alone in the fact that Aphra Behn was the first woman to be a professional writer (other plays, novels - e.g. OROONOKO: or, The Royal Slave [1688] - and commissioned articles), but in the honest bawdy in the depiction of the exploitative nature of men in their sexual relationships. It is a witty verbal conflict in which the women of Naples give as good as they get - think of a more far ranging verbal playground of the Benedick and Beatrice kind in a MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING tone. It was brought to an acute modern attention in 1986 when it was successfully revived by the Royal Shakespeare Company. This is the second production of the play in Belvoir's (Nimrod's) history.

The Director Eamon Flack writes a copious note which is accompanied by a brief history of the life of Aphra Behn, in the Belvoir program, both, full of handsome appraisal and admiration for the playwright and the play.

So, this production of the play begins with an actor, Nikki Shiels, addressing the audience directly with a newly minted foreword to the play proper, giving the impression that she is speaking as the author. Besides other stuff, she berates the critics who might diminish their appreciation of the work because it is written by a woman, and it finishes with a spoken sentiment that more than less urges us that if we don't like what she has said: 'To Fuck Off' out of the theatre. The play begins with that vulgar invitation. None of us left - we'd all paid good money to be there (in my case $70.00) and no offer of money return was given, so ... sit and see. Many, most, took the "Fuck Off ' cue as an offer to laugh and many did - they'd paid money to see Aphra Behn's THE ROVER, and I guess, the trusting audience thought, this was part of it.

Then, after almost three hours, the play finishes with The Rover, Willmore (Toby Schmitz), agreeing to enter the bondage of marriage to ex-convent novitiate (and virgin) Hellena (Taylor Ferguson), leaving the stage empty for a contrived coda by the Director, for the two actors playing most of the servant roles in the play, Callis (Kiruna Stamell) and Moretta/Lucetta (Megan Wilding), to be able, in extended dumb show, to get themselves comfortable, dangling their feet in the pool, counting their ill gotten 'loot', lighting a cigarette for each, puffing it with relaxing comfort, and looking about themselves in the relative 'peace' of the time, to deliver an exclaimed meta-theatre comment in the broadest Aussie 'noise' on the recent hectic traffic of the English sailors in Naples of c.1657: "Fucking Tourists". Lights out. Curtain calls.

The usage of the word FUCK and other broad Aussie lowlife comedy epithets, copiously interpolated into Alphra Behn's text throughout, has been the cue for the most laughter in the performance, not the duets of witty banter between the characters written by the original writer. What was disheartening, for me, was to have read the Belvoir program notes and pre-publicity claim to present the work of a woman of period with admiration and excitement and then to have to witness that company subvert that work with gross undergraduate 'campery' posing as wit: 'fuck that', 'fuck this'; introducing those hackneyed joke choices of men kissing men and discovering the pleasure of it; of men in dresses and loving it: "Oooh, I love your dress", coos one man to another; of actors lisping and limpwristing themselves as comic choices; of women in male attire and slapping their thighs in wide-legged or pigeon-toed, or both, comment; of women foulmouthing or using vocal extrapolations and range games for comic effect; of stopping the plot of the play by referencing contemporary social and sexual politics: Why is the only black actor, doing filthy clean-up duty? Hey, why two women cleaning up the mess? Where are the boys? Get out here!, ad nauseum; and to have Mr Flack indulge his (undoubted) romance with the chaos of the Marx Brothers chase sequences (see my blog on his production of Chekhov's IVANOV), and in this case having one of the actors dressed as a 'penguin' and referenced by almost every other actor, in a wearisome gallop of many, many minutes (hours?); of, I supposed, a subversive political take on strip tease, by having a male who need not be seen naked embrace the 'art' form of it! There was more. This is not just a modernist deconstruction of a play, it was the usual Belvoir destruction.

It seemed to me that there was probably an enormous amount of time in rehearsal invested in developing clowning routines (e.g.Willmore and Blunt, the 'chase' routine) - that took up a lot of the playing time - rather than in elucidating, untangling for modern ears the witty text of Aphra Behn - a very demanding modern task - what too demanding, for contemporary actors and contemporary audiences? This was a disappointing and progressively tedious night in the theatre played to the lowest common denominator of comedy routines - the usual penchant for Aussie caricature and sketch comic routine (what, no pies in the face!) undermining the verbal and plotting wit of Aphra Behn. The Belvoir production felt like a night at Minsky's Burlesque (see, THE NIGHT THEY RAIDED MINSKY'S - film, 1968) rather than a celebration of the work of the Restoration writer Aphra Behn.

There is so much theatrical intelligence and skill on the stage in this cast that all goes to uncritical permissions encouraged by the Director: Gareth Davies, as Ned Blunt (led to doing his usual sad clown act - not again!); Taylor Ferguson, as Hellena (led to playing vocal noise games with her text and sitting pigeon-toed or slapping thighs as comic character indication); Leon Ford, as Belvile (mostly swamped [though valiant in effort] with the disorder about him); Nathan Lovejoy, as Don Antonio (lisping Spanish dialect comedy and untidy wigggery), and Frederick (university undergraduate ad-libbing mistaken for specious wit); Elizabeth Nabben, as Florinda (the actor that, in my book, survives the ghastliness best, despite her broken wrist and cheap verbal references to it); Toby Schmitz, as Willmore (led to delivering what he has done successfully over and over again, over and over again e.g. PRIVATE LIVES, THE PRESENT - just to quote two examples - and it works, so stick with it, but, I know he can do other things?! Let's harness those other 'things', soon); Nikki Shiels, as Angelica Bianca (nearly getting on top of the 'mess' about her to honour Aphra Behn - tries bravely); Kiruna Stamell, as Callis (has a go at not much given, other than the comic turn as a penquin); Andre De Vanny, as Don Pedro (who tries to give faithful work, despite his employment of an inconsistent stammer, to Aphra Behn, but succumbs, ultimately, to wearing a beautiful green dress, clearly Designed and fitted for him, to be funny); Megan Wilding, as Moretta and Lucetta (who obviously has a gift for language but is encouraged to Aussie burlesque schtick to endear us to her work).

How did this happen? No dialogue with the Director? Or just plain submission by the actors? Are theatrical intelligence and theatrical integrity and respect for the writer, different things? Really? In the Sydney Theatre Company's production of Caryl Churchill's CLOUD NINE, there is a similar co-hort of actors with theatrical intelligence and skill who (despite a few blemishes of judgement) with their Director have the integrity of the writer at the forefront of their choices for their audiences. The play and its skill and intentions are beautifully served. A good night in the theatre.

This production is set in a never-never time of period/contemporary image and costumes (Mel Page, both) - there is a feature of an enormous portrait, Fellinesque-like (La Dolce Vita - 1960) of Naples' courtesan, Angelica Bianca, dominating the action of the work - with a shallow tiled pool sitting just off-centre stage, and the Director uses a heightened awareness and usage of the audience and the auditorium as an extension to the physical and verbal offers of the play - sometimes uncomfortably interactive for some members of the audience! The Lighting by Matt Scott delivers on the Directorial modernism and Steve Toulmin serves with his Sound Composition and Design the production's skewed needs well.

If, Mr Flack is so enamoured of the Max Sennett, Marx Brothers, Three Stooges physical and verbal comedy, why not, as he is also Artistic Director at Belvoir, schedule/adapt a Marx Brothers play - THE COCOANUTS (1925-26) ANIMAL CRACKERS (1928-29). Or, one of Mae West's groundbreaking plays - SEX (1926), THE DRAG (1927), DIAMOND LIL (1928)? Let's see a totally neglected farceur such as Avery Hopwood - THE BAT (1920), FAIR AND WARMER (1915), LADIES NIGHT (1920) on stage - and leave IVANOV and THE ROVER unmolested and in tact.

The National Theatre of Parramatta, presents, THE INCREDIBLE HERE AND NOW, written for the stage by the novel writer, Felicity Castagna, at the Riverside Theatres, Parramatta. 13-22 July.

THE INCREDIBLE HERE AND NOW, is a 2013 novel by Felicity Castagna, and has been adapted for the stage by Ms Castagna, herself. Set in Parramatta and written in brief vignettes, it tells the story of 15 year old Michael, during a year when a car accident creates an intense year of sorting out the repercussions on the family, friends and community around him. Adjusting to new circumstances and charged and changing emotional maturations, whilst having to find the way through the continuing process of life.

The production, Designed by Isabel Hudson, has converted the playing space of the theatre into a Traverse one, with the audience seated on either-side, facing each other, with large projection screens, behind, using Video images to concrete images of the world of the play (Martin Kinnane) during the performance. Photographs and film (passing cars - including the idolised iconic mage of the white Pontiac Trans Am) are sophisticated, and the best part of this production. Besides, a stripped-down car body with seats, wheel and lights, that creates the rev-head environ of the world of Dom, Michael's bigger-than-life brother that is the catalyst to all that happens in the play, there is a park space and the tower of the diving board of the local pool. The Sound Composition, Design, by Sean Van Doornum, also packages the experience with ease.

Jeneffa Soldatic and Wayne Harrison are the joint Directors of this work. Unfortunately, the seven actors: Libby Assiak, Caroline Brazier, Alex Cubis, Bardiya McKinnon, Ryan Peters, Sal Sharah and Olivia Simone, who, all but Mr McKinnon, play several roles, never appear to be in connection with each other. The experience of the work was of seven actors still trying to find traction to tell a story. It was never, completely, an in-tune ensemble of storytellers.

THE INCREDIBLE HERE AND NOW, as a novel, creates a sense of what it might be to live in a certain part of Parramatta, at a certain time. It's atmosphere is visceral in its writing and the characters are vital as they deal with joy, tragedy, grief and the irresistible energies of the life forces of the species, in cautious courtship, school life, engaged with a myriad of multi-cultural and generational backgrounds. None of this was successfully created by this production. Whether there is difficulty in the adaptation by the writer I cannot discern as the acting was so disparate and disconnected in the experience in the theatre, that it was hard to realise. Surely the responsibility of the Directors. That the production was forced to postpone its Opening Night by a week heralded some misgivings. Problems were still evident.

This is another disappointing production from THE NATIONAL THEATRE OF PARRAMATTA.

Canberra Youth Theatre in association with the Australian Theatre For Young People (ATYP) THE VERBATIM PROJECT, AT ATYP THEATRE, Wharf 4, Hickson Rd., Walsh Bay. 19-22 July.

Canberra Youth Theatre under the Direction of Katie Cawthorne has developed a Verbatim work: THE VERBATIM PROJECT, with sixteen participants - ten 14-16 year olds and six 65-80 year olds - and brought it to Sydney for a short season, hosted by the Australian Theatre for Young People (ATYP).

It is in the typical verbatim theatre staging formula - physical 'choreography' to illustrate and demarcate the issue segments with direct vocal communication to the audience - and is, relatively, arresting because of the range of personal experiences on some diverse life issues e.g. Mental Health - the issue of Depression, Anxiety; discussion on the difference between Love and Sex, Gender and Identity. The age differences within the group seemed to liberate the participants to some open and free observations and the mutual respect they had with each other, no matter the sex or age of the speaker let one have an empathetic endowment.

Monday, July 24, 2017

Sure Foot Productions in association with New Theatre, by arrangement with ORiGiN Theatrical, on behalf of Samuel French Inc. present MAURITIUS, by Theresa Rebeck, at the New Theatre, King St, Newtown, 12th - 29th July.

MAURITIUS is an American play written by Theresa Rebeck in 2007. Ms Rebeck has quite a catalogue of plays and a history of writing for television and the winner of many awards, including the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award (that is the 'Edgar' of Edgar Allen Poe).

So, with the Edgar Award given to Ms Rebeck, it is no surprise that MAURITIUS unravels as a well made suspense thriller. It is built around an inherited Stamp Collection, that may contain some rare, and hence, valuable stamps and the tensions between half-sisters as to who owns them, and the introduction of three men with obsessive philatelic interests and the possibility of much money profit.

The sisters are hotly hostile to each other and these men are cult-eccentric and, resultantly, socially dangerous to be around when they all want the same thing (think, the pursuit of THE MALTESE FALCON?!!), and give personas to this delicious 'plot' that ratchets up circumstances with a line-by-line tension of enthralling fun. The play supplies the simple pleasure of plot and character that entertains with clear storytelling structures. MAURITIUS, is a well-made play, that some may believe is 'old-fashioned' but is as satisfying as it maybe unfashionable for those post-modernist Writers and Directors that seem to have held some theatres, in our city, in their thrall - to ransom - over the past few years.

But, Ms Rebeck does not just entertain us, but with subtle, deft skill writes with an acute and gentle observation of the human frailties of greed and its penchant to violence to solve its problems in the morass of the ethical values of our present evolving society if, one is prepared to take a pause from just the pleasure of the 'thriller' experience and reflect a little deeper. Like, perhaps, David Mamet's AMERICAN BUFFALO, the moral content of MAURITIUS is larger than the bare context of what we see and hear on the stage.

Most of the company of actors, under the Direction of Richard Cornally, give very good performances: Emma Louise, as a complex and ambiguous Mary; Andy Simpson, an arrogant, supercilious but bored Philip; Peter-William Jamieson, as Dennis, a 'grifter' of charming and seductive powers.

Brett Heath gives an outstanding characterisation as the dangerously obsessed stamp collector, Streling - the physical poise and centred, coiled menace is matched with a cleverly articulated vocal dialect of a hugely sinister weight - it is a most impressive creation (dialect coach, Emma Louise).

The weakness in the production is that of Kitty Hopwood who in playing Jackie, the volatile and 'damaged' youngest sister, tends to play a virtual one-note hysteria with an up-tight physical tension that blocks any possibility to reveal the circumstances/subtleties to justify the actions of her character. Ms Hopwood plays Jackie as angry and offers not much else for us to give empathy to her character's plight.

The Set Design of the production (Rhys William Nicolson) is essentially drab, while the costumes do not seem to have been Designed to reveal character but rather seem to be the clothing of the actors.

MAURITIUS, is a a good story, with interesting characters, and a moral spine with some worthwhile social critique - one doesn't get off scot-free with just base entertainment, when Ms Rebeck writes. I had avery good time.

Seymour Centre presents, SHIT, by Patricia Cornelius, in the Reginald Theatre, at the Seymour Centre, City Rd., Chippendale. 18-29 July.

SHIT, is a play from Patricia Cornelius, that was seen, briefly, as part of the Sydney Festival, in January, this year, brought back to Sydney, for a short season, by the Seymour Centre.

From the program notes:

Ten vital female theatre makers with vast work histories have come together to bring a cast of three into a daring and powerful theatrical experiment with female characters whom we rarely see. These are women who defy gender demarcations, who transgress the boundaries and restraints of social order and expectation. Their language is brutal and uses a grungy poetic style to offer moments of beauty and relief.

Nicki Wilks, Sarah Ward and Peta Brady play three women (Billy, Bobby and Sue) who have never had a real chance to be any thing other than SHIT. They are 'mean, foul mouthed, down trodden, hard bit, utterly damaged women'. These women simply are, are, products of a society that have neglected, and still rejects them with bureaucratic formality and lack of human recognition and concern (rights).

With the 'poetics' of Ms Cornelius and physical 'choreography', Director, Susie Dee, with Design by Marg Horwell, and Lighting by Rachel Burke, presents these women existing in an 'underclass' world of rigorous prejudice that is cruelly demanding and unforgiving to any kind of 'weakness', even in their own created milieu.

The content and language of the work is angry and confronting but seems to have become, in performance, a little too rote. The performance I saw lacked the raw power of what they were crafting, rather it was routine and superficially experienced, allowing the audience to be more easily detached than they, maybe, should be. They performed, they were impersonators, we watched, intellectually attached but viscerally, relatively, untouched (in any way). They did not seem to be experiencing an existence of a real nihil - a thing of no value, shit.

This explosive uncompromising work requires explosive cauterising inhabitations by the actors for it to have a truly powerful impact. I never believed that I was experiencing the life of Billy, Bobby or Sue, rather watching well drilled performers. The play better than the acting.

Thursday, July 20, 2017

LITTLE BORDERS is a new Australian play by Phillip Kavanagh and was the winner of the 2011 Patrick White Award.

This production at The Old 505 was wonderfully good. Director Dominic Mercer have with his Designers: Charlie Edward Davis and Jeremy Allen, a clean dropped cyclorama unrolled onto the stage floor forward towards us, decorated only with a small circle collection of 'toy' model houses that can be (magically!) lit from the inside. This space was brought to eerie life with an atmospheric Lighting Design by Emma Lockhart, mostly, with a bluish (ghost-like) tinge - ominous - supported well with Composition and Sound Design by Clemence Williams.

Two young actors: Lucy Goleby and Brandon McClelland, individually brimming with acute craftmanship and astute sensibilities to the writer's affects to achieve his attentions, have a remarkable empathetic chemistry and seamless concentration of delicate insight, a duo of wit and satiric gentleness, each dressed eloquently by Isabel Hudson for the shifting storytelling. They are a formidable and talented duo. An outright bonus for us, indeed. All of the elements of the production are exquisitely shaped by Mr Mercer.

LITTLE BORDERS has us meet a modern couple full of modern paranoia and mania. Elle and Steve are recognisable in the world we live in, if not in the mirrors of our own home - quell the horrors of that recognition, and be grateful for your own control and restraint, I presume and hope! The play is a direct conversation to us, the audience, in duet and in monologue. Regular readers of this blog will recognise my dislike of this 'modern' common formula of playwriting. However, so gifted were this duo of actors, and the accurate precision of the musical tempo conducted by Mr Mercer, I was transported into the centre of the play without emotional hesitation or my usual prejudices about the playwriting-methodology pricking my consciousness - I was involved, 'lost', in the storytelling by these characters - these actors and Director.

This is the first production of this remarkable prize winning play of 2011 some 6 years after its celebration by the Patrick White Award. Says Mr Kavanagh in the notes to the newly published text: 'At the time of writing it felt speculative--a satirical world we could soon end up inhabiting if our political discourse continued on its rhetorical path of division; if we were encouraged to give over to fear and panic; if the violence we perpetrated outweighed anything that was aimed at us.' And, when one reflects where we are as a culture - civilisation - in 2017, that is what seems to have, more than less, manifested, and it makes this play and this prescient playwright worth attending to.

Certainly, I need to see a new production of REPLAY, by Phillip Kavanagh, the play produced at the Griffin, a few years ago, which was for me a confused and mystifying experience. One sensed the talent of the writer and that was despite the production on the stage. Watching this first play, LITTLE BORDERS, has made me extremely curious about the possibility of a different, new production of REPLAY, to discover what it is saying.

LITTLE BORDERS at The Old 505 was a pure gem of theatre making. I wish that you were able to catch it, but, alas, the short season has finished. But, who knows? Will keep you informed, if it has a resurrection.

P.S. Phillip Kavanagh's LITTLE BORDERS is the first official 8th Buffalo play script to be published. It is a text for two young actors with some wonderful monologues. Contact: 8thbuffalo@gmail.com
Note that Sport For Jove also have self-published some of their original texts e.g. Chekhov's THREE SISTERS, in a new contemporary Australian translation by Karen Vickery; ANTIGONE, a new text by Damien Ryan. Check their site.

THE PLANT, by Kit Brookman, is the winner of the Ensemble Theatre's 2016 New Writing Commission. Sue (Sandy Gore) and her three children, Erin (Helen Dallimore), Daniel (Garth Holcombe) and Naomi (Briallen Clarke) are packing up the family home after the death of the Husband/Father from, what one of them describe as: 'in-built obsolescence'. It is essentially a comedy.

On a raised green covered platform, backed by a wall of curtain (the Set and Costume Design is by Isabel Hudson, working within the skeleton of the NEVILLE'S ISLAND Set demands, the other play in repertoire at the theatre), the Director, Elsie Egerton-Till, moves the actors around the space to use shared direct novelistic exposition to the audience whilst also accommodating interactive scenes between the characters. The children, all, are pre-occupied with their own lives and only cursorily attend to their mother's needs. It is three years since the passing and Sue has not recovered from her loss. She responds by buying a plant, a Bergonia Rex, and gives it a name, Clare, and has animated conversations with it. The children are kinda weirded-out. Mother seems more contented.

It is a comedy with a very gentle observational eye on the millennial manners of this time. But, soon, we are introduced to the plant with a human form (Michelle Davidson, swathed in a 'plant costume'), and suddenly, the play lifted into an intriguing surreal possibility - the possibility of an absurdist reality, A Lewis Carroll, Eugene Ionesco or even Monty Python wonderland!! I was immediately excited to see where Mr Brookman was going to go. Unfortunately, we are quickly disabused of that tantalising trajectory and we are shown a meeting at the ocean edge between depressed Sue and a homeless young woman who strike a deal for mutual support and aid. So, the play returns to a pat-naturalistic set of conflicts that are amusing but oh-so-familiar, even when faintly ridiculous. The playwright, tiresomely, over-explains all the motivations, and the action of the play stays fairly static and so we, mostly, get to admire the charm and skill of the actors to keep us continuously, pleasantly, engaged.

Ms Dallimore and Clarke are especially spry with their material and carry great conviction both comic and real. Mr Holcombe manages a fairly cliche arc-journey and character with aplomb, whilst Ms Davidson puts to very admirable result her personal charm and skills to keep us interested in the not completely realised - in the writing - potential of her human/plant, Clare. At the centre of the play is Ms Gore who holds a delicate balance with her character's depression and comic struggle to survive, using a mellifluous vocal sound that, for some, is mannerist and an irritant, for others, a delight.

Ms Egerton-Till's management of the stage is not always sure in the demands of the space and its relationship with its audience, but that maybe the result of the need to share the Design area. The Lighting, by Benjamin Brockman is not as subtle as to make it invisible, as yet, whilst the Sound Design, by Daryl Wallis supports the world and atmosphere of the work.

THE PLANT, is a pleasant time spent in the theatre and is a benign and amused observation of possible modern manners.

Red Line Productions present THIS MUCH IS TRUE, by Louis Nowra, at the Old Fitz Theatre, Cathedral St, Woolloomooloo, 12 July - 12 August.

THIS MUCH IS TRUE is the first major commission from Red Line Productions. The Old Fitz Theatre is a 60 seat theatre in the basement of the Old Fitz Hotel, in Woolloomooloo, and one of the regular denizens, one of the locals of the neighbourhood, that uses the pub as a regular drinking location and 'community centre' is Australian writer Louis Nowra. Since 2014, Andrew Henry, one of the Directors of Red Line Productions, has encouraged Mr Nowra to write a play for the theatre and here it is. It features a character called 'Lewis' and is the third play where 'Lewis' appears, the earlier plays being SUMMER OF THE ALIENS (1992) and COSI (1992), to complete what Mr Nowra calls: THE LEWIS TRILOGY.

We enter and meet some customers in the bar of a very tired space. Once we are 'comfortable', Lewis enters (Septimus Caton) and talks directly to us, the audience, as he explains his reason why he is in THE RISING SUN pub - he has just moved into the neighbourhood and is looking for a local drinking 'hole'. He has found the one and then he introduces us to the present, and some past, 'personalities' of the bar: a debt collector, Malcolm (Alan Dukes), a drag queen, Venus (Justin Stewart Cotta), a rogue chemist, Clarrie (Martin Jacobs), a manic depressive, Wesley (Ashley Lyons), a 'fixer', Cass (Danny Adcock), a financial consultant, Rhys (Robin Goldsworthy) and barmaid, Gretel (Joanna Downing). It has been one of the many traits of Mr Nowra's work to look at the underclasses, to find beauty in misery, to appreciate the 'honour' that may be found in the many (all) stratas of our world.

THIS MUCH IS TRUE, is a new Australian play, that sounds and looks like a revival of a classic of the Australian Theatre, of a past time - of the 50's-60's. You know: THE SUMMER OF THE SEVENTEENTH DOLL***- Ray Lawler; or, THIS OLD MAN COMES ROLLING HOME - Dorothy Hewett; or especially in the output of Peter Kenna, THE SLAUGHTER OF ST TERESA'S DAY and even, A HARD GOD with its love of the shaggy-dog storytelling and Irish/Aussie sentimentality and love of the 'blarney', a bragging one-upmanship. Broad comic 'characters' filled with the breath of a warm identification in cliche caricatures and situations imbued with a language of romantic argot and exaggeration. Without Indigenous or migrant character and no women drinkers, other than the pallid hippie barmaid and a drag queen. THIS MUCH IS TRUE, has elements of Mr Nowra's Uncle Bob Herbert's 1979 play, NO NAMES ... NO PACK DRILL - it, too, not shy of indulging a cultural nostalgia for the exciting Underbelly of past times of the Aussie 'battler' making the best with/of the least in World War II criminal Kings Cross. Some of it is true, but most of it is 'romance' - the romance of an underclass white set of rogues. The content of this play - a two hour, no-interval, 'hard-on-yer-bum' journey, is as familiar and, oddly, seems as welcome today, as it always had been.

Add, then, the very bold playing of the actors encouraged by Director, Toby Schmitz, the crisp, excited 'presentational' style of a time gone-bye - literally watching 'actors-on-the -stage' playing, affectionately, characters - that conjures a benign nostalgic 'drug' aura that permeates the tiny space at the Old Fitz to give, for the willing, an ecstatic high of seeing the familiar 'family-tribe' in a 'holy' tribal meeting place - the local pub, and you can glow with cultural memory radiations.

Danny Adcock has the time of his life with the opportunities of Cass, the classic storyteller who, as the local 'fixer' might be 'full of it' or not, and offers us the fun of trying to guess which story is which - bull or not! Too, Martin Jacobs as, Clarrie, the local chemical mixer - a fallen educated chemist - has a clear energy that cuts through to the crazy hilarity of his addictive service/habit to his community. Both these performances in a comic high-style of near vaudeville dynamics of hilarity - expressed, gloriously, with barely repressed energetic physicalities, on the edge of 'exploding'.

It is transfixing to remember Justin Stewart Cotta's performance as Vershinin in Sport For Jove's production of THREE SISTERS***, exactly this time last year, and watch him inhabiting a self-centred, misogynistic survivor as a drag queen star, Venus, full of self-delusion and self-pity as to why she is alone. Quite a contrast of acting bravura.

The rest of the company capture what the writer offers with appetite, with Ashley Lyons, attempting to bring some tragedy to the relatively thin story-line written by Mr Nowra, for the bi-polar depressive, Wesley. Mr Nowra is, otherwise, generally, generous to his actors giving each a time in the sun - a monologue - to give a turn on this 'vaudeville programming', a moment in a solo spotlight, on the Old Fitz stage. One must not forget the surety that Mr Caton gives to his Lewis as our interlocutor to these members of our 'tribe', with very subtle, but telling, touches of observation of the writer himself. It is a relatively thankless task for Mr Caton but is imbued with verve and intelligence, mining the few opportunities smartly.

There are some Directorial sleights of hand with the Set Design by Anna Gardiner and the Costuming by Martelle Hunt, incorporating well an atmospheric Sound Design, by Jed Silver and the dab-hand with the busy Lighting plot of Matt Cox. Mr Nowra's writing is often wonderfully robust and has an old style hyperbolic Aussie poetry about it all, bringing the nostalgic warmth, in style, of a Setting Sun, rather than the pith and promise, the sap of growth (future), of a Rising Sun.

This is a fun, heart warming night in the theatre. It demands a long sit on hard benches but with the proper pre-load, you might get through it with ease.

BEFORE LYSISTRATA is a new Australian play, by Ellana Costa, presented by a dedicated young company of artists, Montague Basement.

LYSISTRATA, a play by Aristophanes, written in 411 BC, tells of the women of Athens and Sparta who decided to withhold sexual activity until their men gave up a war and made peace.

BEFORE LYSISTRATA, is a contemporary prequel by Ellana Costa, a speculative fiction presenting the journey of the women/wives of Pericles and Archidamus: Lysistrata and Lampito, during the declaration and warring of the two nation states Athens and Sparta in what we know as the Peloponnesian War, and how they came to the joint call-for-action heralded in the famed comedy of LYSISTRATA.

In this play, initially, both women make public championing speeches for their country's cause - positive propaganda - encouraged, strategically, by their condescending and bullying war lords/husbands, who use the 'soft power' of the female perspective to keep the states in conflict. But, as the war rages on, and both sides suffer great losses, including the personal loss and risk to their own children, the women begin to question and challenge, at great cost to themselves, the values that underpin this need for war. Though enemies, the rival women find that they have concerns that ought to bind them - that the face to face conversation can de-demonise the enemy and allow/permit an embrace, instead, to a common, concerned humanity - to peace.

(It is the lesson of the new and highly prized play, OSLO, by J.T. Rogers - a play dealing with the 1993 Oslo Accords between the Israelis and the Palestinians - soon to open in London after a season in New York - the 2017 Tony Award winning play. When for Sydney, I wonder? It has a cast of more than 10 and is very intelligent and provocative, with only a few laughs - so-o-o, probably, never!)

In this traverse space in the KXT one wall has ancient Greek script covering it, on the other, there are presented documentary images of modern warfare (one being, a truly frightening video compilation of the politicians and generals of the wars of the last century), and, including, pithy quotations from Thucydides' great book: THE HISTORY OF THE PELOPONESSIAN WAR: e.g. "self-control is the chief element in self-respect, and respect of self, in turn, is the chief element in courage"; "so little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand". In fact the structure of this drama reflects, sometimes, the means that Thucydides used in his History construct (i.e. the direct speech forms).

The Director, Saro Lusty-Cavallari, has employed some very inventive activities for the many scenes of the writing to present the arguments and expositions of the characters of Ms Costa's passionate vision statement. Ms Costa says in the program notes:

BEFORE LYSISTRATA is about a lot of things. It's about the role of women in leadership and about the inactive Left. It's about the power of working together and the folly of elitism. It's about us vs them, and realising there is no other side. It's about what we can do right and what we have done wrong.

I gathered, that it may be about the sense of individual and social responsibility.

And, true, it may be about all those things and, perhaps, other things as well, but no matter the promising writing by Ms Costa and the invention of Mr Lusty-Cavallari, it all comes to nothing if the acting fails to deliver it. It is an all female cast: Michaela Savina - as Lysistrata, she is also the writer of the Story of the play; Alex Francis, playing a double male set of characters, Pericles and Archidamus; with the writer herself, Ellana Costa, as Lampito. And, although, they are committed and passionate, they are mostly only aspirational as actors, with observably underdeveloped acting skills - vocal and physical - and so fail, consistently, to bring this material to any gripping dramatic reality so as to capture and 'keep' an audience involved, interested. One of the primary skills of any Director is to be able to CAST well. Clearly this has not happened here - it has a 'feeling' of nepotism (a lovely word of Greek origin): patronage of 'family' relationship but not of merit. Their credits in the program have many projects in common - and it brings, unfortunately, this ambitious and laudable enterprise of BEFORE LYSISTRATA, undone - down. With better actors this play may be of more impact.

Sunday, July 9, 2017

Let us begin at the top. This is the BEST production I have seen at the Sydney Theatre Company (STC) for many a long year. Get your self a ticket ASAP.

This production of CLOUD NINE, a play by Caryl Churchill, written in 1979, Directed for the STC by Kip Williams (their new Artistic Director), with Matthew Backer, Kate Box, Harry Greenwood, Anita Hegh, Josh McConville, Heather Mitchell and Anthony Taufa – is an absolute "knock out".

To begin where all things in the theatre (and cinema) begin: The Writer and the Play. Caryl Churchill has been an idiosyncratic leader in the development of form for contemporary English theatre. In content, she has mostly explored the abuse of power with a bent to feminist themes and ideas highlighting issues of gender and sexuality.

CLOUD NINE is an early play in her oeuvre and was written for Joint Stock Theatre Group under the Direction of Max Stafford-Clark. The Joint Stock Method was to set up a workshop in which the writer, director and actors research a particular subject. The writer then goes away to write the play, before returning to the company for a rehearsal and rewrite period. The workshop for CLOUD NINE was about sexual politics. Ms Churchill tells us:

When I came to write the play, I returned to an idea that had been touched on briefly in the workshop - the parallel between colonial and sexual oppression, which Jean Genet calls 'the colonial or feminine mentality of interiorised repression'.

So, the first act of CLOUD NINE is set in Victorian Africa, where Clive, the white man, imposes his social and cultural ideals onto his family and the natives. In this act Ms Churchill sets up further insights by requiring cross-gender and race casting and it is, besides being hilarious, a pertinent contemplation. The second act is set in London in the time of the play (1978-9) with its burgeoning changing of attitudes towards sexuality, and, although, this is some 38 years ago, the act today, still, has much relevant confrontation to astonish and move one. (Although the two acts are 150 odd years apart the characters are only 25 years older.)

I had re-read the play before attending the performance and had felt the play was interesting but not arresting - as the Director, Kip Williams says in his conversation in the program notes;

When you read a Churchill play, you really only comprehend one layer of its meaning off the page. In her theatre, the performer is central to how the text makes meaning.

Any production's success is dependent on the quality of the actors and Mr Williams has found a cast that brings this text to vital life. The acting from this company is remarkably good, each a gem of great worth, but, all, in ensemble, a 'tiara' of rare quality - thinking, inspired, by Queen Victoria's jewellery!

Josh McConville brings a stony rigidity of sexual hypocrisy to Clive, the patriarch of the Victorian family in the realms of steamy colonial Africa - a man of his period exercising his privilege(s) - and gets to contrast this male power by having to play in the second act a young girl, Cathy, hardly out of her infancy, full of wilful exploration and explosive energy.

Harry Greenwood is breathlessly brilliant and disciplined in the cross-dressed role of Betty, the wife of Clive, with a hankering for infidelity with the local derring-do hero, Harry, and then is subtle and gently moving as the son Edward sensibly coping with his floating sexuality in the second act.

Anthony Taufa embraces Harry Bagley, a repressed sexual explorer - pan-sexual - with confused charm, to contrast as Martin, the husband of Victoria, a superficially engaged feminist male who can't help trying to dominate his wife - a marvellously difficult challenge which Mr Taufa meets with some grace.

Anita Hegh playing the Victorian mother-in-law and inhibiting arbiter of behaviour, Maud, blossoms appealingly with a growing, if reluctant, taster of sexual freedom as Victoria in the second act - it is a remarkably subtle and detailed 'drawing' of character development.

Matthew Backer, playing the self-loathing blackman-servant, Joshua, (Ms Churchill stipulates that a white actor play this role) balances this 'angry' tragedy with the blundering sex-ploiter Gerry, trying to find his true self in the dominating charge of his sexual appetite. Mr Backer creates another superb performance for us this year, the other, his recent 'turn' in ONLY HEAVEN KNOWS , at the Hayes Theatre.

Heather Mitchell is truly delicate and pathetic in the 'trouser' role of young gay Edward in the first act of the play and is positively radiant as Betty, in the second act, finding her independence and rights with gathering confidence and joy. The final moments of the production are worth the cost of the ticket and Ms Mitchell once more gives us a gift of storytelling and character that is devastating in its fine judgement and inhabited realities. Glorious, as usual.

Kate Box, playing a duo of women in the first act of the play, Ellen, a repressed governess, in the wiles of Africa, a victim and 'slave' to the conventions of Victorian expectations, and Mrs Saunders, a widowed, emancipated woman of courage cutting a swathe through the jungles of Africa and the conventions of the period. She is remarkable in the powerful contrasts between confused, gentle and desperate Ellen to that of assertive, confident Saunders. The demarcation of each is immaculate and breathless in its finely judged timing - the speed of her costume changes are astonishing in their achievement, just in themselves! However, in the second act, she 'tops' those characterisations, when as a single mother-lesbian, Lin, Ms Box creates a woman finding her self with a delicate, compassionate insight that reveals an actor with consummate skills of intelligence and emotional truth with a finely managed vocal and physical characterisation. Collectively, it is a stand-out performance.

It is a simple joy to write of this company of actors who bring such humour, insight and compassion, skill, to the satiric writings of Ms Churchill, and credit must go to Mr Williams in his astute casting ability. That this company of actors can bring such individual and ensemble gifts to this production one wonders what they, if they were a core to an Ensemble Company, what could they bring to the STC stage on a regular roster. (I have a further list of actors to add to that co-hort!)

The Set and Costume Design are by Elizabeth Gadsby. It was with a sense of 'oh, no!' that I greeted the white, windowed box, set in an upstage corner, and although one was appreciative of the metaphorical conceptual statement of the idea-image, it is in the staging practicalities that it fails. Scenes in the 'box' lost vocal clarity and dynamics - the temperature, tempo of the play dipped every time it was used - one was always grateful when the actors came out and we could engage once again with the full sound of the embodied voices of the actors instead of coping with a cool and confused echoing, broadcast (?) shallowness of sound emanating from the box. The soil floor of Africa in the first act was covered by a 'grass' floor of the London park in the second. The stage-management must have been relieved, although it is the elaborate period costuming of the first act that 'suffers' the most 'damage' with that soil(ed) choice - it is a usual preference in the aesthetics of Mr Williams (e.g. THE GOLDEN AGE, FALLOUT.)

An intricate element of the production's success is the Music Composition of Chris Williams and the Sound Design of Nate Edmondson, whilst the Lighting Design by Alexander Berlage is subtly supportive and beautiful.

CLOUD NINE is a must to see. One might think that this 38 year old play might be slightly dated in its sexual political concerns - and in the contemporary detail of the evolving sexual platforms of our age that is quite true, but in the cultural overload of traditions still affecting us, nothing much as changed - look at our own governments' prevaricating on same-sex marriage, for instance - and if the 'old' powers could, the 'Victorian' ethos would be reverted too, no doubt. CLOUD NINE is as relevant as ever. Besides, artistically, you will not have seen better at the STC for some time - the quality of the Acting and delicacy of Directing is astonishing and all inspired and supported by great playwriting from one of the living Giants of our time: CARYL CHURCHILL.

Do go.

P.S. It is of interest to me that all the actors are graduates from the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA), that is 'old' NIDA, and that the Director, Set and Costume Designer, Lighting Designer and Sound Designer are, also, graduates. I should declare that I, once, taught at NIDA, and have watched these actors grow over the past years with interest - I do have 'inside' knowledge and observation of these actors over many, many years. It is, however, not prejudicial favour that caused this production's reportage by me, and you can best judge that, by seeing for yourself.

Four middle-aged men on a community/business bonding excursion are wrecked on the rocks of an island, are stranded and out of network contact. Each man with a hidden 'psychic' break lurking just below their consciousness, under the duress of this isolation and their relatively inept ability to adapt to the challenges, disintegrate into a bourgeois (and superficial) 'Lord of the Flies' scenario. The conceit of this work is that it is filtered through the 'mask of comedy' with not too much swap to the 'mask of tragedy'.

NEVILLE'S ISLAND, by Tim Firth, was a play commissioned by Alan Ayckbourn for his theatre in Scarborough. It transferred to the West End for a successful season. It, also, was made into a television comedy in 1998 - unfortunately, for me, it is not a GILLIGAN'S ISLAND. Mr Firth's most famous work is CALENDAR GIRLS, a re-write of his film, which later, became a musical called, THE GIRLS. For this play Mr Kilmurry has adapted the text with Australian sociological and geographical references.

Mark Kilmurry, has cast actor, David Lynch (Neville), with a company of television performers: Andrew Hansen (Roy), Craig Reucassel (Angus) and Chris Taylor (Gordon), whom some of us may celebrate as part of the outrageous The Chaser Team and their other satiric 'spin-off's': The Hamster Wheel, CNNN, The Checkout and War on Waste, that have (will) be remembered for their important contribution to Australian television comic history. The honed comic skills of these performers are employed with witty observation of 'characteristics' of the men they are impersonating and are infused with the core warmth and appeal of the personas of each of these appealing well known personalities. It is an easy night in the theatre. Really, not much more challenging than a night in front of your television set watching a well written but lightweight sit-com.

It is simply told on an inventive 'island' Set Design by Hugh O'Connor, lit by Ben Brookman with his usual panache, supported by a Sound Design of bird noises, fireworks and nearby, but 'blasé', civilisation mechanics: a passing disco cruise boat, a search plane and a rescue helicopter, among them! The costume/stage management department have quiet a challenge with all those wet clothes (those 'poor' actors in the middle of winter!) - well done!

My last time in the Ensemble Theatre was watching their wonderful production of Edward Albee's genius play, WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? I loved all three hours of its harrowing comic inventiveness - it is a great play. NEVILLE'S ISLAND, no matter the skill in putting it together, is not a necessary 'cup of tea' for me - it is a sedate, commercial piece of ordinary television writing. But following through on the Company's by-line : "ENSEMBLE - theatre for everyone", this production will please some of their audience. It seems to be astute commercial curating, for, most of the audience I was with, had a very good time.

Monday, July 3, 2017

MORGAN STERN an hour long monologue-play by Gina Schien, was presented earlier in the year and is now preparing to tour to the Edinburgh Festival.

Morgan Stern is haunted by THE GENT. The Gent a mysterious figure from the English Georgian era is some 221 years old, is part ghost, part protector, and has been been assigned to minister to Morgan, a young Sydneysider living with schizophrenia. Both The Gent and Morgan are struggling with memories, hauntings of 'madness' and institutions. Ms Schien is writing from an intimate exploration of schizophrenia, family and the search for internal peace, having lived an experience with her own brother. There is complexity in the rapidly shifting narrative across centuries and countries (hemispheres) and in the writing has an urgency and power in its unravelling.

Under the Direction of Goldele Rayment, with a vividly supporting Sound Design by Tegan Nicholls, Graeme Rhodes presents Morgan Stern. There is intelligent imagination going on here, but the skills to deliver the demands of the writing are limited to a narrow range of expression, both physically and, especially, vocally. Resultantly, the storytelling offers tend to flatten out and fails to keep one sufficiently stimulated, engaged or concerned. The vital risk of monologue performing - is the need for the actor to emanate an internal energy that activates and radiates, for a reaching out to engage the audience with the storyteller. The audience must be irresistibly drawn to the actor and absorbed into the need to hear the dilemma of the character. Mr Rhodes tends to 'blur' his tasks and fails to clearly demarcate the many different characters of his story. He rather insists that we go to him. Mr Rhodes, at this performance, failed to startle us, to galvanise us to 'travel' with The Gent's or Morgan Stern's journey, he rather asked us to do more work to stay with him than we could, we ought.

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Kevin Jackson

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Mission Statement

This blog developed out of another task. When talking to an IT Savant they suggested that I post these reviews. In doing so it struck me that in the cultural ether there is very little discussion of what is happening. On the weekend (Sunday) I counted 34 pages of sport analysis. Maybe 10 or 12 pages on media celebrity, (centred mainly about Television) and no Arts. No diverse Music discussion. No Art discussion. No Dance or Theatre discussion. So I feel that in writing this blog my intention is to help facilitate constructive Discussion. I see this blog as a CATALYST for real "speak". I see it as some way to RECORD for History's sake events and to INTERPRET them. I hope engagement and exchange evolves. I guess this might be what Marketing might call a Mission Statement.